Ghost Medicine by Aimée and David Thurlo

officers. Can we speak to you for a moment?”
    “Yes, we’ve been expecting a visit. Come inside,”the slender man in his late twenties said.
    Mr. Sells, who introduced himself on the porch but declined to shake hands with strangers, motioned Ella and Justine inside. He then introduced them to his wife, Marcie Sells, a short, stout Navajo woman with two young kids beside her. The first- or second-graders, judging from their size, fixated on Ella’s badge at first, then her holstered handgun.
    “Cori, Lexy, take your books and go read in your room while the adults talk,” Mrs. Sells said.
    “Have a seat, Officer Clah, Officer Goodluck,” Mr. Sells said as his wife urged the kids down the narrow center aisle of the mobile home.
    Ella motioned for Justine to take the inside seat of a padded bench and table attached to the floor, then slipped in beside her. From where she was, Ella could seeout of the mobile home’s large window. As she watched, a nondescript pickup in the distance made its way up the long stretch of road.
    Mr. Sells took a seat across from Ella. When his wife returned, she remained standing by the small stove in the kitchen area.
    “Would you like some coffee, Officers?” Mrs. Sells asked, then, hearing someone driving up, glanced out the window. “Who’s that?”
    Ellasaw the pickup come to a stop beside the tribal SUV. The driver, wearing sunglasses and a baseball cap, was looking straight ahead, his hand up, blocking his face. Catching a glimpse of movement, Ella shifted her gaze and saw the passenger door on the opposite side open and someone hurry out.
    Suddenly alert, Ella stood, bumping the table as she moved out from the bench. “Are they messing withour unit?”
    Seconds later, the passenger, also wearing a cap, jumped back into the cab, and the driver took off, still hiding his face.
    Ella raced for the door. “Hurry, Justine. I think those guys did something to our SUV.”
    Justine followed her out onto the porch just as a loud pop and an ominous whooshing sounded. An instant later, they saw a cloud of black smoke, and flames came billowingout from beneath the SUV’s engine compartment.
    Ella looked around for something to put out the fire with, but Mr. Sells had already grabbed a large fire extinguisher from a shelf in the wall.
    “Here. I’ve got another in my truck. Go!” he said.
    With a quick thanks, she took the heavy cylinder and ran down the driveway toward the SUV.
    In the distance, Ella heard the pickup’s driver honking hishorn as he raced away. She almost expected to hear a war whoop.
    The second she reached the SUV, Ella pulled the safety pin on the extinguisher. She aimed the nozzle in front of the burning object on the ground—a broken glass jug full of some kind of oil—and squeezed the trigger.
    A dense cloud of creamy white powder from the extinguisher enveloped the underside of the vehicle as Ella swept thehose back and forth at the base of the burning container.
    The scent was familiar, like that of cooking oil that had ignited into a kitchen-style grease fire. At home, she would have smothered it with a metal lid or wet towel, but this required a different solution.
    Ella tried not to inhale any fumes or breathe in the noxious smoke. Hopefully, she could put out the burning oil before the chemicalspray ran out, or the gas or brake line of the Suburban ignited.
    “I’m going to bury the bottom of the car in the sand, Ella. That should smother the flames!” Justine shouted, circling to the driver’s side. “Try to keep the undercarriage from catching for a few more seconds.”
    Justine slipped behind the wheel as Mr. Sells ran up and added the chemical spray of a second extinguisher to her efforts.

    The SUV started instantly and Justine hit the gas, driving across a shallow drainage ditch and up on to a three-foot-high mound of sand. High centered now, the wheels spun for a second before Justine killed the engine and scrambled out of the vehicle.
    Ella